


The scars on your back, that's where you grow wings

by whoami



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Loki (Marvel) Lives, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki being Loki, M/M, Pining, Plus the first Avengers and Infinity War, References to all Thor's movies, Scars, Smut, kind of, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 15:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16098743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoami/pseuds/whoami
Summary: Set in a AU-ish canon in which people get a scar for every lie they tell.****Almost from the moment Loki begins to speak, he starts collecting scars. He wears them like a badge, like it’s something to be proud of instead of ashamed.Loki is intimately pleased about each and every one that mars his golden brother’s skin; proof, all of them, that Thor is so not perfect and unreachable, after all.





	The scars on your back, that's where you grow wings

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I know I have a long fic WIP and I swear I'll be going back to that, it's just that I read a prompt on Tumblr - can't find the original post to link it, sorry - that basically talked about a universe in which people got scars for lying, the bigger the lie, the deeper and uglier the scar and my first thought was: "Wow, Loki would be so full of scars, he'd finish skin for more" and then I thought about what scars would be deeper and why.  
> In the end, I got a tad obsessed with the concept and I decided that I couldn't write anything else until this was done, so... Enjoy, I guess?

Almost from the moment Loki begins to speak, he starts collecting scars.

The first one is something trivial, no more than a little stinging on his left index finger, but the shock of it makes him cry out. He puts the finger in his mouth, trying to soothe himself and looks at his mom with huge, sad eyes, thinking that maybe she caught his lie and punished him for it with magic. Frigga just smiles indulgently and explains to him how lies work; how, for each and every one of them, one gets a scar: bigger the lie, deeper and uglier the scar – more painful, too.

He doesn’t stop lying, doesn’t even consider it; it would be like asking father to stop being the king of Asgard or asking Thor to stop yielding thunder. Lying is what Loki does; instead, he learns how to control his reactions to the pain he brings on himself.

His body is a canvas, randomly placed silver lines, varying from thin and painless to as deep as the ones soldiers get when caught by an enemy’s sword. He has them on his shoulders, his fingers, his nose, his hips and chest and back; almost no inch of skin is spared from his deceitful tongue. He wears them like a badge, like it’s something to be proud of instead of ashamed.

Thor has scars, too, a lot less in number and ugliness than Loki’s: the ones on his fingers that everyone has, thin and no more painful than a paper cut, the kind of scars that can be translated with: “Of course I already finished my studies today” or “I won’t drink more than one tankard of mead, tonight”; a deeper one just under his left shoulder blade from that time he swore he could take on an adult Bilgesnipe down all by himself and another, deeper still, on his right hip. He usually comes to Loki to show them off and Loki is intimately pleased about each and every one that mars his golden brother’s skin; proof, all of them, that Thor is so not perfect and unreachable, after all.

The ones Loki loves the most, though, are those identical to his own; the ones that appear at the exact same moment and in the exact same place on both of their bodies, when they are partners in crime and get up to mischief together. There’s one on their chests, starting just under the left nipple and going diagonally; they got it when they told their father they were going horse riding, only to sneak off in the armory, to watch Mjolnir and all the other treasures, dreaming of a day when they will wield that power themselves.

Loki often traces that particular scar with his fingers, imagines doing the same with Thor’s – along with all the others on his body – and wondering if it would feel the same or if it would be different, if Thor would sigh under his touch or if he would tremble from tension; if it would make him giggle, ticklish or if – someway, somehow, for some absurd reason – it would bring him pleasure, it would make him hard.

He always ends up stroking himself, thinking about touching and tasting every last inch of his brother’s skin and then, after he comes, he feels so guilty he can barely look Thor in the eye for days.

They drift apart sometime into their six-hundredth year: Thor stops coming to him to brag about just about anything or to coax him out of the library, Loki stops searching for him when he’s bored and they don’t have matching scars on their bodies anymore. He still looks at his brother from afar, still finds ways to intimately know how his body looks, still comes with Thor’s name on his lips.

Loki grows weary and bitter; his lies become bolder, more venomous and vicious. He’s shunned more by the people each day and still, he can’t stop; he doesn’t want to, not when cutting off all of Sif’s hair grants him some attention from Thor, his eyes shining with barely suppressed violence and his voice shaking around words filled with rage. Loki drinks it in like the masochist he is, deeply inside; tells Thor nonchalantly that he doesn’t know what happened with his friend and he’s _so very sorry_ to hear about it. The cut bites deep, stinging and unforgiving, and Loki relishes the scar that will appear vertically on his thigh, will remember Thor’s disappointment every time he looks at it.

Loki is also a creature of deep inconsistency and he acts on a whim most of the time, so he eventually fixes the damage, gifting Sif with a beautiful head of hair. They’re not the same but they’re good enough to earn a grateful smile from Thor and that’s all Loki is after, all he is _ever_ after.

That’s not his ugliest scar, though: that appears on a beautiful summer day, when he and Thor are almost one thousand years and it’s time for Father to pick an heir. Loki has known for years, maybe centuries, how this day would go, so he’s not the least bit surprised when Thor easily lifts Mjolnir and all of Asgard rejoices. It was an obvious choice from the start, simple and inevitable.

And yet, when Thor – gorgeous, perfect, hateful, stupid Thor – comes to his rooms, after the celebration and asks him how he’s faring, all genuine concern; when Loki tells him: “I’m fine, I’m glad it was you” and “No, I’m not jealous at all”, he can feel a ripping in correspondence with his shoulder blades, two twin scars going so deep that he has to tighten his fists and bite his tongue to not scream. Never, in a thousand years, he has lied so badly to feel this kind of pain.

Thor embraces him when the blood is still slowly flowing down his back. He doesn’t notice. Thor doesn’t notice a lot of things.

They’re clean cuts, he discovers later, when Thor finally leaves him alone. They wouldn’t scar too badly, except that he’s forced to say the same lies again and again – to his father, his mother, Thor’s friends, Thor himself every single time his lessons on kingship or his coronation is brought up… Each time, Loki repeats that it’s fine, that he’s not jealous and each time, the scars reopen, until they’re both so jagged that Loki doesn’t even remember how it was like to have smooth skin there.

The day of Thor’s coronation, almost five hundred years later, Loki tells Thor: “Sometimes I am envious, but never doubt that I love you” while a handful of Jotun warriors that Loki himself has let into Asgard specifically to ruin Thor’s day skulk into the shadows of the palace, searching for the armory.

No new scar appears on his body.

****

He’s not a monster.

That’s what Loki tells himself when he sends the Destroyer to kill Thor. He can’t prove everyone that he’s not a monster if Thor comes back to Asgard, so he has to go. It’s simple.

It also feels like he’s tearing away his organs with his own bare hands.

He’s not a monster.

It’s what Loki whispers when he lets Laufey in Odin’s bedchamber. He’s doing Asgard – the whole Nine Realms, in fact – a favor by getting rid of the king of monsters. They’ll see what he’s done, they’ll see it’s for the best. It’s for all their safety.

He’s not a monster.

It’s what Loki thinks while he sets the Bifrost on Jotunheim and leaves it open. _They_ are the monsters, he’s Asgardian. If they’re gone, there are no monsters anymore. Children can sleep safe. Odin can be proud.

He _is_ a monster, it’s what he realizes when Odin tells him no, when he gazes at him with cool eyes from the edge of the destroyed Bifrost. He looks at Thor, his brave, hero brother who slays monsters and decides that he would rather kill this monster himself than let him do it.

He lets go of Gungnir.

***

When they see each other again, Loki has no new scars on his body because that’s not how Thanos works.

He has others, though: scars that tell him that Thor didn’t scream for him on the Bifrost but pushed him over the edge himself, watching his fall with cold, apathetic eyes; scars that makes Loki remember of contempt and hate from his brother; scars that translate in mocking words and cruel slights, from all of Asgard, from Odin and, most of all, from Thor.

His mind is so twisted on itself that he’s even sure that Thor knows, has known from the beginning about his shameful desires and that’s why he has pushed him away, all those years ago. Thor is disgusted by him, that’s a simple truth that he has come to accept and embrace during the year they’ve been apart.

Then they are actually face to face and Loki wants to believe Thor’s words of grief and home so fiercely, he _aches_ from it.

In the end, though, he has a goal to reach, new scars still added on his battered mind at regular intervals, too many to just disappear at the mere sight of his brother.

His mind is finally his own again sometimes after the Hulk’s trashing. By then, he already has the gag in his mouth and the handcuffs on his wrists, his brother looking at him with so much disappointment and frustration that Loki is not sure he could actually say anything, even if he had the possibility.

When the Tesseract brings them back, Thor delivers it and him to a bunch of palace guards, then he disappears, not once looking back at him.

Loki fully expects the sentence he gets; he still manages to gain a few new scars during his encounter with Odin. The pain is familiar and welcomed, almost like an old friend. It’s a pain that he knows how to handle and that, frankly, didn’t even remember.

Frigga visits him a few times, using magic. He doesn’t get a physical scar when he refuses her as his mother because it’s not technically a lie, but the one deep in his heart stings as much as his worst scars ever did.

Thor never visits.

***

Loki is selfish.

It has always been an intrinsic characteristic for him, as intimate to his sense of self as lying. He is capable of acts of kindness, sure, but always with an ulterior motive or with a price to pay for it.

And yet, there’s an exception – the same exception there’s always been, his whole life.

And the exception is now in front of Odin, renouncing the throne to live with humans, with _his_ human. Loki burns with the desire to reveal himself, binding Thor to Asgard as it is his responsibility, keeping him away from Jane enough that she will move on without him.

He’s so close to drop the illusion, so close to sacrifice his own freedom just so Thor won’t have his, and yet, in the end, he doesn’t.

Oh yes, he’ll love to be king for a while, but he’s sure Thor will figure out his rouse soon enough. It’s inevitable, like the choice of the heir was. In the meantime, though, they both can enjoy something they desire, just not together.

Is it an act of selflessness, letting Thor think he died, letting him move on with his life? Is it selfish to let him mourn a brother that’s still alive? He’s not sure he knows the difference between the two anymore. Maybe he never did.

The scar on his chest – the newest one, from where he was pierced on Svartalfheim – is still tender when Thor finally turns away to exit the throne room.

 _I didn’t do it for him,_ he told Thor, during those terrible moments in which he actually thought he was dying. _I did it for you,_ he would have added, if he had another breath in his lungs.

Loki lets him go.

***

He should have suspected that Ragnarok would come by his hand. What he never would have imagined was Thor suggesting it.

Watching their home planet explode leaves him both with a sense of terrible relief and dooming horror. They are truly alone, now.

He still hesitates before entering his brother’s room on the ship, not confident on how he will be received. He remembers very clearly the frustration at being ignored before Thor’s match on Sakaar and, later on, the pain that blossomed in his chest at _our paths diverged a long time ago_ and _it’s probably for the best if we never see each other again._ He felt itchiness on his skin and in his eyes when Thor agreed and it still leaves him agitated, even now.

When all is said and done, though, Loki is weak. He enters the room, catches the stopper Thor throws at him and says _I’m here_ , hoping that’s good enough for now.

It is.

***

He has a single, solitary regret.

He thinks about it while pledging himself to Thor and when his dagger is inevitably blocked and one last time, with a huge purple hand squeezing the life from his throat.

He should have told Thor.

***

Loki didn’t think he would come back this time but life apparently has the tendency to cling to him, even when he has already let go of it. He wakes up Jotun and maybe that curse is what saved him, in the end. How deliciously ironic.

He finds his brother broken, a shadow of the person he remembers. Thor looks at him like a dream, whispers his name with a fierce yearning but stays perfectly still, maybe afraid that he will disappear at the first sudden movement.

Loki touches his face, says _I’m here_ and they are both lost.

He doesn’t know _how_ they are kissing or who started it, he only knows that he’s hot all over, that his lips fit perfectly over Thor’s and that he wants _more_.

They pant and scratch in their eagerness, tearing clothes apart and barely looking into each other’s eyes before going back to explore each other’s body. It’s fast, messy, violent and utterly perfect.

Thor’s hand are rough in their caresses, he can feel them trace the myriad of scars on his body. Loki is not self conscious about them, never has been, but the reverence with which Thor worships him is overwhelming in a way that almost makes him hide under the covers.

He winces when Thor puts his mouth on his chest, tracing the scar of his second death just before his favorite one, the one they got together, so many years ago that it almost feels like an illusion more than an actual memory. They’ve changed so much.

He closes his eyes tightly against the sadness in his brother’s gaze when Thor’s hands wander over his back, feeling the two twin scars on his shoulder blades. A tear escapes Loki’s eye when he feels the softest kiss being pressed on each of them.

Eventually, he gets tired, so he flips their position. Thor doesn’t protest. Loki drinks in every shudder, breathy moan, needy groan and all there is in between. He wants to get drunk on his brother’s pleasure.

They don’t speak for a long time, until Thor’s so hard he’s steadily leaking and Loki really wants to taste him. That’s when Thor says _don’t_ and then, voice lower from arousal, _I want to come inside you_.

Loki almost comes on the spot.

It’s a lot wetter than he ever imagined and it stings a bit, but in the end, it’s everything Loki ever wanted and more. He can see Thor’s eyes and his expression when he finally enters him, an ecstasy so genuine that Loki can’t do anything more than stare, speechless.

Thor doesn’t bleed when he says _I’ve wanted this since forever,_ so Loki knows that he’s not lying. The implications are more than he can think about at the moment, so he just grabs what little hair Thor has left and yanks him closer to kiss him, moaning in his mouth when the motion drives Thor deeper inside him.

It both ends too soon and it seems to last forever.

After, Thor murmurs things so sweet in his ear, about how he missed Loki so bad that he couldn’t breathe and that he’s sorry about everything. Loki doesn’t ask what he means, just tightens his arms around Thor’s chest.

He suddenly remembers something and he doesn’t really want to say it, he feels vulnerable just thinking about it, but Thanos is still out there and they might not have as much time as Loki wishes.

So he looks Thor in the eyes – one the blue that always mesmerized him, the other a new amber-ish color that he feels he could grow to love just as much – and says _I love you._

Thor beams and it’s like watching the sun, shining brighter than ever after a thunderstorm. _I love you, too._

For now, that’s all that matters. They are at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, what did you think? I always greatly appreciate feedback!  
> Oh, btw, the title is a kind of free translation from a verse of an Italian song, I forgot to say that at the beginning.  
> See you all very soon! xxx
> 
> whoami


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